The great handtool refurbishment

[michael_m]

At 5 down and 25 to go... i hope you have a diamond stone and a willingness to sweat.

hah hah

Yes, I'm using a diamond stone. To get the back down to roughly flat I'm just using the coarse side of an Aldi 4-sided diamond stone. It is very aggressive, and does a quick job of getting out pits and high spots.

Then I polish them up on an Ezy-Lap 2-sided fine/extra-fine stone and give them a final swipe over a white Arkansas stone.

I'm not worrying about getting the backs flat from tip to handle and side to side, just getting a full width flatness for the first two inches or so, and some flat co-planar contact points further back along the blade.

They're old chisels; they weren't precision cast or ground, and some of the poor sods have been attacked with belt sanders, the side of grinding wheels and in one case it looks like an angle grinder was used to sharpen it! I'd be on a hiding to nothing if I tried to make them truly flat. Flat enough is good enough.

[michael_m]

The latest tools I have fixed up are the second saw that looked like this:

_IGP2601.JPG


And now looks like this:

_IGP2892.JPG

the handle is the rip-saw partner to the first saw. I only put three bolts in it because I used the original holes, of which there were only three left once I had trimmed the end. It makes it a bit easier to tell it apart from its companion (the handles are slightly different - the crosscut has a higher hang angle, and the placement of the horns on the top is a bit different). I sharpened it rip, and it cuts straight and without complaint.

Here it is with its crosscut companion. Both are 7 tpi.

_IGP2894.JPG


The other refurb I have done is a fix-up of a Falcon 4 1/2 plane that I bought for $20 about a year and a half ago. It was covered in rust and both handles had broken.
Vinegar and a bit of elbow grease took care of the rust. Fortunately, nothing had seized or rusted together, so it was easy to remove/adjust the frog, advancement wheel and blade adjuster lever.

Here it is with the old handles in front of it. The writing on the blade wasn't visible when I bought it, but up even better than in the photo. The blade appears to be close to its full original length; I'm not sure why, as the amount of dings on the front of the plane, the paint splatters and the state of the handles suggest it has been used extensively.

_IGP2889.JPG

The original paintwork is still in pretty good nick (over 85% coverage) so I left it as is, and apart from a go-over with 400 W/D sandpaper, I haven't bothered to polish the sides at all. The bottom is flat in all the areas it needs to be (toe, heel and mouth all coplanar), so I only did a light flatten with 180, 240 and 400 grits.

The new handles are redgum. The tote I made yesterday, the front handle I turned about a year ago. They're not from the same bit of wood, but I forgot which bit I made the front knob from, and have no desire to turn another one to exactly match the tote. A couple of years of use will see them pretty much the same colour anyway.

_IGP2883.JPG


The blade takes and holds an edge well. Here it is on a bit of the wood I cut the tote from.

_IGP2876.JPG

Cheers, Mike

[IanW]

Well done, Mike. You started with some ugly ducklings & released their inner swans! And nice to see the Falcon brought back from the brink. You are allowed to feel just a bit pleased with yourself, I reckon....

Cheers,

[Sawdust Maker]

Nice work

pat yourself on the back

[Bushmiller]

Ditto

Regards
Paul

[michael_m]

Thanks guys, I am feeling pretty good about them at the moment.

Next up I think will be a backsaw and a hand-drill. Then maybe all the braces and bits I've accumulated?

Cheers, Mike

[code4pay]

Wow I'm going to have to up my game with saw handles!

[Timmymacca]

Mike

That is some very impressive work, love the saw handles.

You don't do house calls do you? I'm not sure how this happened but I seem to have acquired a bit of a backlog of saws to fix up...



Oh and there's also this lot.



Good thing I only work 60 hours a week and have just 2 kids under 3...

Cheers

Tim

[burraboy]

Mike



I seem to have acquired a bit of a backlog of saws to fix up...



Oh and there's also this lot.

[Bushmiller]

Mike

That is some very impressive work, love the saw handles.

You don't do house calls do you? I'm not sure how this happened but I seem to have acquired a bit of a backlog of saws to fix up...



Oh and there's also this lot.



Good thing I only work 60 hours a week and have just 2 kids under 3...

Cheers

Tim

Well Tim,

I guess we can look forward to seeing you at the meetings. The first step is acknowledging that you are an addict.

The second step is not caring .

Regards
Paul

[Twisted Tenon]

The latest tools I have fixed up are the second saw that looked like this
_IGP2894.JPG

Cheers, Mike

They look great Mike. How did you clean up the saw blades so well?
TT

[michael_m]

Mike

That is some very impressive work, love the saw handles.

You don't do house calls do you? I'm not sure how this happened but I seem to have acquired a bit of a backlog of saws to fix up...



Oh and there's also this lot.



Good thing I only work 60 hours a week and have just 2 kids under 3...

Cheers

Tim

Gosh, while I'd LOVe to help you out, I don't think I'd be able to get through a pile like that in less than a decade!

I know how it goes with a fulltime job and little kids. I'm a bit more fortunate in that my 3 are a little bit older than yours (7, 4 and almost 3), and I get brownie points from the wife for spending quality time with them in the shed. I set them up on the opposite side of the workbench to me with hammers, nails, a couple of tiny saws and a hand-drill, and they bang away happily at scrap bits of wood while I get on with my work. I'm happy, they're happy, my wife's happy, everyone's happy!

Having said that, I usually only get 1-3 hours a weekend to work. A lot of it is done after the kids are in bed, which is one reason I like hand tools - no nasty noise to annoy the neighbours.

[michael_m]

They look great Mike. How did you clean up the saw blades so well?
TT

Thanks TT,

I cleaned the rust off in a vinegar bath (about 6 hours, from memory). I took them out partway through, gave them a solid scrub with a red metal scouring sponge (from the sanding aisle at Masters), then put them back in. At the end, I scrubbed them again with the scourer, with 240 grit, then with 400 W/D in the vinegar and 0000 steel wool. Then, I wiped them down, sprayed with WD-40, wiped them down again and rubbed them with paste wax.

Cheers, Mike

[Twisted Tenon]

Thanks Mike
So that's about 70% elbow grease to 30% chemicals
Well worth it though.

TT

[snafuspyramid]

Where did you find the connector bolts - they look really good (in fact, better than traditional nuts to my eye)